


Advanced Case Study in Pack Scent-Dependence

by Anonymous



Series: Scent [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alpha Annie, Alpha Shirley, Alpha Troy, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Beta Abed, Beta Pierce, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I hope some of it is funny anyway, Jeff Winger has abandonment issues, Jeff Winger has self-esteem issues, Jeff Winger’s hatred of Rich, Jeff and Britta are best friends and none of you can convince me otherwise, Jeff and Britta nesting together during heat, Jeff and Britta’s casual sexual relationship, Jeff is tired of people making remarks about his height, Jeff-centric, Nesting, Omega Britta, Omega Jeff, Pierce being Pierce, Platonic Cuddling, Protective Shirley, Scenting, also they have casual sex in this, and Jeff/Annie is still not yet a thing in this fic, burn so slow there’s gotta be a sequel where Jeff/Annie actually get together, but I’m following canon so there, it’s just clear that they like each other, scent dependency, so I added the tag, that has to happen post-series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26436691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Arguably, heats and ruts themselves are just a biological means of drawing people together. Sex isn’t always at play. Scent is always at play though. That’s why you and Britta like nesting together during heat. It’s why you stopped wearing blockers, and then stopped taking your suppressants. Right, Jeff?"Jeff very carefully avoids looking at anyone except his (presently very annoying) beta friend. “Abed… I think you’re reading into some things.”“I don’t think so,” Abed replies, but not in an argumentative tone. “I think you’ve been afraid of letting the group in for a long time, but that slowly letting your  cinnamony scent come through represents you slowly becoming a more emotionally open person.”“Abed,” Jeff says in a warning tone.“…And your story ends with you becoming the omega who’s scent-dependent on his pack.”Jeff slams his hand down on the table hard, making most of the group jump, and glares at Abed fiercely. “I am not scent-dependent on the study group,” He says sharply. “And I never will be.”
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, Britta Perry & Jeff Winger, Britta Perry/Jeff Winger, Jeff Winger & the Study Group
Series: Scent [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921684
Comments: 11
Kudos: 59
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

Since Jeff Winger was at presentation age, people have always assumed he’s an alpha or beta. He doesn’t like to stereotype, but he supposes it mostly has to do with his general attitude of extreme confidence… and of course, his height. Male omegas are slightly more uncommon than other designations to begin with, and there aren’t many omegas—male or female ones—who are 6’4’’. This has lead to people immediately being thrown off when they meet Jeff, and never _ever_ guessing that he’s an omega… And Jeff is okay with that. Being an omega (especially a tall, outwardly confident, male omega) is somewhat uncommon and can be… _messy_. Jeff wouldn’t say he’s ashamed of his designation, or uncomfortable or insecure about it. In fact, a few times, he’s considered going off suppressants so that he can entice potential sexual partners with his sweet, cinnamony omega scent (like that bastard from pottery class, Rich). But he’d hate to scent bond with anyone he had sex with, heats are very annoying, attention from male alphas is annoying (because he isn’t interested), aggressive, unwanted attention from female alphas is annoying, and above all... people never shut the fuck up about his height when they know he’s an omega.

Before Jeff concealed his omega status, the incredibly rude thing that often got blurted out at him at some point in conversation was, “You’re really tall for an omega.” This was often followed by a line of questioning that essentially boiled down to: Are you worried that alphas won’t want to mate you for fear of feeling emasculated by being shorter than you are? The whole conversation was always _very_ annoying, and it happened all the time.

Firstly, as far as Jeff is concerned, people who won’t date a person taller (or shorter) than them are stupid… and in his particular case, he is perfectly happy for those people to naturally select themselves out of his dating pool. Secondly, talk of what must be his constant concern—whether or not he can be mated—is nauseating to Jeff. The presumption is that he must want to mate. But Jeff never _ever_ plans to mate. Fuck mating, and fuck marriage. Jeff will stay on suppressants, and have sex with mostly beta women, and when he has to skip his pill every 6 months for health reasons, he’ll spend his heat alone, watching TV and fucking himself with the one half decent dildo he managed to find online that wasn’t pink, purple, or trying too hard to look like an actual penis, thank you very much.

Jeff wears blockers and keeps his designation unknown during his entire career as a lawyer for business reasons… and because Allen would probably start hitting on him if he knew Jeff was an omega, which is gross, because Allen is gross. People simply don’t trust an omega lawyer as much in the courtroom. Obviously, there are discrimination laws that mean no firm can refuse to hire him based on his designation--he isn’t living in the 1880s, after all. Still, Jeff has seen it over and over: clients being uncertain about omega colleagues being aggressive and confident enough to handle their case, and those colleagues themselves deciding to hide their designation to deal with clients prejudices. So Jeff just… doesn’t make it a thing. And when he goes to Greendale, and meets the study group, “not making it a thing” is just a thing that continues.

It isn’t like Jeff _lies_ about his designation. He never has (though he’s _implied_ he was a certain designation in the past when it suited his interest). His attitude has always been to let people assume. He let people assume that his bachelor’s degree came from _Columbia_ and not _Colombia_ the whole time he was a lawyer… why not let people assume—always—right away—that he’s an alpha or a beta? So that’s how it goes for over a decade of Jeff’s life, and it’s how it goes (at first) with the study group.

Every once in a while, a debate will arise between Pierce and Troy over whether Jeff is an alpha or a beta, but usually they’re silenced by Britta, who argues that designations don’t matter (except of course, when she thinks they do). Alternatively, whatever inane thing is happening that day will interrupt their debate, or Pierce will just insist Jeff’s a beta playing at being an alpha and refuse to hear anything else.

If that sounds like Pierce transferring his emotions onto Jeff… well. That’s Pierce for you, with a powerful alpha father who was always disappointed in his son for being born a beta and not an alpha like him. Just another reason Jeff thinks fathers are the fucking worst.

Eventually, the arguments become more heated and serious, and Troy simply blurts out one day, “Jeff, are you an alpha or not?”

Jeff, still staring down at his phone pretty much ignoring the entire discussion, simply murmurs, “I’m not an alpha.”

“Jeff’s an omega”, Abed says.

Everyone stares at Abed for a moment, and then Pierce snickers. “Yeah right, Abed… like an omega could be that tall.”

Britta starts arguing with Pierce about average alpha and omega height, with Annie chiming in something she’d read on the subject, and Jeff just keeps scrolling through Twitter.

So from then on, it’s assumed that the matter is closed and Jeff’s a beta.

Troy is an alpha, which is incredibly stereotypical given his years as the star quarterback of his high school… but on a personal level, Troy is more emotional than alphas are “supposed” to be (no matter what Britta tries to tell him about how that’s all bullshit) which leads to insecurity about his designation, so Troy plays it down.

Shirley is an alpha too, but her ex-husband is a beta, so Shirley carried all of their babies despite the risk of complication in female alpha pregnancies... which only makes Jeff quietly respect her more. There’s some kind of conservative values at play in Shirley’s relationship with her designation as well, that everyone in the group is way too intimidated to unpack (except occasionally Britta, who everyone wishes would shut up when she brings it up).

Abed is a beta, which of course he associates with his position as a person on the outside looking in, struggling to understand people when he can’t smell their emotions. It all sounds a bit designationist to Jeff when Abed goes down that rabbit hole… and blockers are so common that he’s barely disadvantaged, but oh well.

Britta is the only other omega in the group, and when that somehow becomes _a thing_ , because she thinks she’s the _only_ omega in the group… well, that’s the only time Jeff feels kind of bad about not saying anything about his own omega status… or greatly annoyed, depending on what Britta’s on about. If she’s telling the rest of the group that they’re being anti-omega, Jeff is usually rolling his eyes, arguing with her, and being told he has no right to do so since he isn’t an omega. If she’s hormonal, nearing her heat, and upset that there aren’t any other omegas in the group to nest with, Jeff feels kind of bad.

Omegas typically like to spend their heat in one of two ways: there’s the popularized, sexy way—hooking up with an alpha and having tons of sex to sate their heat—or alternatively, nesting with another omega they’re close with. Omegas going totally knot crazy during heat is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah—heightened arousal is a common symptom, but it’s actually being with an alpha during a heat, surrounded by their scent and pheromones, that tends to heighten an omega’s sexual appetite in the extreme. Being with another omega during a heat and nesting with them, having their pheromones and scent around, traditionally brings a sense of comfort and symptom relief all by itself. Usually no fucking is involved when omegas nest together (unless the omegas are both into that).

Britta is a bit outside of the norm in terms of her heat. She becomes very hormonal (which isn’t unusual) but she also is prone to experience a _decrease_ in libido, alternately wants to be touched and not be touched at all, and is actually disgusted by alpha scents during her heat. All she wants when she’s nearing her heat is to nest, and she mourns the fact that she isn’t close with another omega who could nest with her (there’s also some narrative in there about the “empowerment“ of sharing heats with other omegas in ones pack, but Jeff usually tunes that part out). Britta nesting alone, of all things, makes Jeff feel guilty about not being forthcoming with his designation (even though the idea of navigating nesting with Britta every two months to help her through her heat… possibly even _syncing up_ , _Jesus Christ_ is… _ew_ ). But aside from occasional guilt about keeping his designation from Britta, Jeff is perfectly comfortable with the group’s assumptions about him.

Of course though, it all eventually comes out.

The guilt Jeff occasionally feels about ignoring Britta’s isolation, as well as the fact that, you know, the two of them have sex on the study room table during paintball, and keep having sex after that… leads to Britta being the first and only member of the group who Jeff straight up tells he’s an omega. And of course, it happens when they’re making out on his bed, pulling their clothes off, and Britta is saying something about how to get her off that “a beta like you wouldn’t understand” just to piss him off, and Jeff is sexually frustrated and personally frustrated and kind of drunk, and he just whines, “I _am_ an omega, Britta. Please for the love of god, stop talking down to me about what omegas want and feel all the fucking time!”

Of course, this confession does nothing for Jeff’s sexual frustration, as it pauses proceedings entirely. Britta stiffens, then scrambles out from underneath him, leaning back against the pillows on his bed and just staring.

Jeff rolls his eyes. “What?”

“You’re a fucking omega, Jeff?” She asks, looking at him incredulously.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Jeff rolls his eyes.

“I’m not surprised. Okay—well, yeah I am… but mainly, I’m fucking _pissed_.” She growls. “You let me believe you were a beta all this time! What the fuck, Jeff?” Her voice strains a bit, and her scent turns sad and hurt, and Jeff sobers some, swallowing down his shame, because he knows what she’s about to say.

“You know—I’ve mentioned it more than once—that being the only omega in the study group—in this group that’s basically become pack—fucking _sucks_ for me, especially around my heat, because there’s no one whose scent can help me… no one to nest with me…” Her eyes blur with tears, but she blinks them away. “You’re pack, Jeff, and you’re an omega, and you know how I feel, and you’ve been sitting there this whole time, knowing you could help me, and you just said fucking nothing? Am I really that repulsive to you as a person? Am I just a hole you wanna fuck sometimes?”

“Jesus, Britta,” Jeff scoffs. “You aren’t repulsive to me, and you’re not a hole for me to fuck.”

She looks at him disbelievingly, glassy-eyed.

Jeff sighs. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, okay? I’ll-I’ll make it up to you.” He hates himself, even as he promises, because just being around Britta _close_ to her heat is already awkward enough (she cries a _lot_ ). But he’s already hurt her enough. “Look, if you want… from now on, I’ll nest with you during your stupid heats, okay? We’ll sync up and we can braid each other’s hair and watch whatever stupid romance movies you wanna watch and eat ice cream and brownies.”

“Wow. Way to promote just a massive fucking amount of stereotypes there, Jeff,” Britta says judgily.

“Whatever. I don’t know why you don’t just go on suppressants.”

“Because I enjoy being in tune with my body, Jeff,” Britta retorts, “Unlike _you_ , apparently. What is this, some kind of sexist, insecure, omega male thing? Are you ashamed of your designation, so you lie about it?”

“I’ve never lied about my designation,” Jeff corrects her. “You all just assume. Everyone assumes, and it’s easier than dealing with all of your ridiculous questions and drama, so I let everyone think what they already think about me.”

“Why?” Britta presses.

“Well, not getting alpha males crawling all over me is certainly a plus.”

“Yeah right. You’re not _that_ hot,” Britta argues, still uncertain and wounded.

“I’m not interested in mating or marriage.”

“Neither am I—I still don’t _deceive_ people about who I am.”

“I’m 6’4’’, and I’m tired of dealing with annoying, stupid, persistent questions about my height every time someone finds out I’m an omega,” Jeff rattles off.

Somehow, strangely, this is the one explanation that Britta understands and accepts. Her face softens, and she looks at him with a modicum of sympathy. “Okay, fine. That makes sense.”

“Can we have sex now?” Jeff wheedles.

Britta scowls at him and folds her arms across her chest. “No. I have another question. Why do you suck so bad at sex with an omega if you are one yourself?”

“I do not suck at sex!” Jeff hisses.

“Yes you do, and it doesn’t make sense!” Britta argues back. “For a while, I assumed you were just a selfish lover who didn’t care enough to learn how to pleasure an omega properly, or assumed omegas could just get off from nothing at all… but you have a whole opening of your own _right there_ , so you ought to have at least _some_ idea of how to stimulate mine—but no! You suck just as bad as any beta or alpha male at pleasuring an omega.”

“Screw you, Perry! I don’t even wanna have sex with you anymore! By the way, you’re not exactly all that impressive yourself. At least I _listen_ to you when you tell me what you want. You just pretend you know what you’re doing and my opinion doesn’t matter!”

“Oh, is this about your freakishly sensitive _nipples_ now?”

“Don’t mention my nipples if you’re just gonna mock me!”

“Whatever, Winger! You just don’t wanna admit you suck at eating me out even though you should understand at least _something_ about what I’d like!”

“Why should I understand? No ones ever gone down on _me_! I pretend to be a beta, remember?”

Britta stops, the argument forgotten suddenly, and just stares. She opens her mouth, then closes it again.

“Jeff… are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “What? It’s not a big deal.”

“Out of all the sex you’ve had… that you brag about all the time… you’re telling me that not once have you let a partner know that you’re an omega and you might be interested in something besides your dick getting attention?”

“Whatever, Britta!” Jeff starts to climb off the bed, ready to put his pants back on and never _ever_ text Britta for a booty call again.

She grips him by the arm, stopping him. “Jeff… you can get up, and go back to your sad existence never knowing what it’s like to have someone rim you, or you can lay down on this bed and let me eat your virginal ass out right now. Your choice.”

So maybe Jeff decides not to get up in a huff, because maybe, possibly, what Britta is offering is something he’s thought about a lot, and maybe Britta turns out to be very good at it, and turns him into a gasping, whimpering, begging mess within seconds, who proceeds to come untouched for the first time because she’s _that_ good at it, and maybe she gives him a _very_ smug look afterward, which starts another argument, and ends with him coming untouched _again_. But they won’t be discussing that. What’s important is that they’re both a lot more satisfied with their hook ups from then on.

* * *

Britta doesn’t tell on him.

Their secret hook ups continue, and when Britta’s heat comes again, Jeff comes over with a six-pack of beer and a tub of vegan ice cream, sans blockers for the first time in a very long time, and he does the whole nesting thing with her, and it’s not as awful as he feared, honestly. Jeff maybe even enjoys himself a little—finds himself a bit drunk on their combined, contented scents. Maybe he even starts to look forward to the next time they nest together… just a little bit. Sexual expectations go out the window, and they’re just two omegas sharing the same space, and it’s… comforting—nice. They mostly just sleep in her bed, surrounded by mountains of blankets and pillows, their sweet scents mingling. Sometimes, Britta wants to cuddle with her nose shoved up right against his neck, drinking in the comforting scent of another omega in her pack. Other times, she wants him on the complete opposite side of the bed and swaddles herself in blankets. Sometimes they sit on her couch under the same blanket and watch stupid horror movies while eating carrots and dip, mocking the people on screen.

So maybe Jeff discovers he actually likes nesting with Britta a lot.

* * *

The rest of the group finding out that Jeff’s an omega happens (of course) because of Annie’s missing pen, which leads to Abed’s bag being searched, and the discovery of his ill-advised notebook charting.

Shirley and Annie are horrified to find the dates of their ruts marked out in Abed’s notebook. Britta’s heat is clearly marked. Troy is omitted because Abed didn’t need to chart him. Then Jeff is there, dates skewed just a bit off from Britta. He doesn’t actually have real heats unless he skips his suppressants for a full week (which he’s supposed to do every six months) but he does still experience some subtle symptoms. Apparently, it’s been noticeable enough that Abed picked up on it.

So of course, Shirley and Annie are looking at the chart with horrified expressions, and then they completely lose interest in their own violation because Jeff is marked on a heat calendar with Britta, and they can’t figure out why, and then it dawns on them and everyone except Abed and Britta is staring at him.

Then Annie blurts out, “Jeff?!” In a very high-pitched voice and then everyone is talking over each other, Annie saying something about how he doesn’t trust them, Shirley grilling him, Troy asking what’s going on while no one bothers to help him catch on, Pierce shouting “I knew all along!” and, “Now it’s completely confirmed—Jeff is totally gay!”

“Okay, okay, look—“ Jeff says, bringing the room to quiet with a pinching motion of his hands.

Everyone stops talking and looks at him expectantly.

“I just want to point out that Abed did something really creepy, and now you’re letting him get away with it by focusing on me instead. Also, Annie’s pen is still missing. So what‘s really the largest issue here?”

“You!” Annie and Shirley blurt out at the same time.

“What is going on???” Troy screams, standing up from his chair abruptly with clenched fists and demanding to be answered.

“Jeff’s an omega, and he’s totally gay,” Pierce replies.

“Oh. Is that all?” Troy says, calming immediately and sitting back down.

“Still wrong, Pierce—and see?” Jeff says, gesturing to Troy. “Troy knows this isn’t a big deal. Abed and Britta aren’t freaking out. What’s with the obsession with my designation from you two?” He says, gesturing accusingly toward Annie and Shirley.

“Abed’s reaction doesn’t count. Clearly, he already knew—and didn’t _tell_ anyone!” Annie says accusingly, folding her arms and glaring at Abed.

“Actually, I mentioned it a long time ago, but none of you believed me,” Abed deadpans. “Also, Britta knew too.”

Annie gasps in an offended tone and looks at Britta in betrayal.

“Britta and Jeff nest together during Britta’s heats,” Abed adds.

Annie’s anger melts. “Awwwww” She and Shirley say in unison, turning toward Jeff and Britta with gooey, soft-eyed sappiness.

Britta and Jeff both roll their eyes.

“Jeffrey, I’m just a little upset that we’ve all known you for this long and you didn’t let us know. I know designations can be private, but the study group is almost like pack,” Shirley says more gently.

“Don’t you trust us, Jeff? I know sometimes being a male omega can be complicated, but you know none of us would ever judge you, right?” Annie adds worriedly.

“And how can your pack truly come alongside you and help you when you need it if you don’t let us know about your needs, hm?” Shirley continues softly.

“I don’t have any _needs_ ,” Jeff replies. “And I don’t have issues with being a male omega. I’m on suppressants and I use blockers like millions of other people. The only ‘need’ I have is best served by letting people make their own assumptions about my designation.”

Jeff is thrown several questioning looks across the study table.

“He’s talking about his height and how people won’t shut up about it when they know he’s an omega,” Britta clarifies.

A massive murmuring of “Makes sense”, “You _are_ very tall…” “Oh okay”, and “Cool. Cool cool cool” carries across the room.

They go back to finding the pen, and everything is pretty much normal, except that when everyone strips down to their underwear, Annie and Shirley avert their eyes and _don’t_ steal glances at Jeff’s body like they probably would have before—likely out of some new sense of alpha chivalry.

Another weird thing that happens after (that really reveals an inherent weirdness about designations and how people react to them) is that the Dean’s constant touching of Jeff stops being as interesting as drying paint to the group and becomes something everyone is indignant about. This is revealed when Craig touches Jeff on the shoulder one too many times in the same conversation, and Shirley goes from scowling, to glaring, to hitting him with her giant handbag.

“Step away, Dean!” She says in a low, threatening tone.

“Ow!” Craig whines. “What was _that_ for?”

“You show our Jeffrey some respect!” Shirley snaps. “No more of this touching him all the time, getting all up in his personal space. You keep your hands to yourself!”

Then, of course, there’s the “Annie of it all”… which also somehow becomes more strange than it already was.

Somehow, when it’s revealed that Jeff’s an omega, dynamics shift slightly from Jeff baring the sole responsibility of keeping his and Annie’s relationship above board—making sure to protect her innocence and let her and her school-girl crush down gently… to Annie, as an alpha, now also feeling some responsibility to be more cautious and above-board with and around _Jeff._

This makes no sense to Jeff, because he feels like things—even subtle things—shouldn’t really be _different_ just because the study group knows he could, theoretically, carry Annie’s babies. Annie seems to feel differently.

The week after Jeff’s designation is out, the two of them are walking down the hallway together during night school hours, searching for Professor Professorson’s classroom, when Annie suddenly stops in the hallway, leaving him striding a few feet ahead of her before he realizes she’s failed to keep in step.

“Jeff… I need to say something,” She says from behind him.

Jeff turns around to face her, confused.

She’s looking at him with those stupidly blue eyes of hers, looking anxious but determined. She falters for a moment, her mouth forming a tight line, then breathes and, looking somewhere to his right, says, “I’ve been thinking… about… about some of how I’ve behaved in the past… and there’s something I regret, and I need to apologize.”

Jeff squints at her. “Uh… okay?”

“Last year,” Annie swallows, “We did that debate together against City College, and I just… grabbed you and kissed you without your consent… and looking back, that wasn’t okay, and I just want you to know that I’m sorry,” She says, and _Jesus_ —she’s actually getting kind of _choked up_ about it, like it’s this huge deal, and Jeff has to open and close his mouth several times, before his brain can process what she’s said and what he should do about it.

“Annie…” He gets out eventually. “Is this about me being an omega?”

Annie wrings her hands, eyes cutting from side to side for a moment, like she doesn’t want to answer him. “…Maybe?” She eventually lets out.

“Well then you’re being ridiculous,” Jeff finds himself almost snapping.

Annie balks at his tone, taking a half step back, and then he remembers again: _Fuck_ , _she’s like 19 years old._

He sighs. “Uhh… sorry.” He softens his voice, and looks at her very sincerely. “All I mean, is that it didn’t matter before, and it doesn’t matter now. Nothing’s changed…. Okay?”

Annie seems to debate within herself for a minute, but then she nods, and Jeff nods back. “Great. Now let’s find Professor Professorson.”

So that’s slightly weird. Also, Pierce says dumb things sometimes, but Pierce always says dumb things, so whatever. All in all, things go on pretty much as normal with the group after the realization of Jeff’s true designation.

* * *

Jeff relaxes his personal policies on wearing blockers. He wears them when he goes to school (only the group is privy to his designation) but if the group goes camping or has a movie night at someones apartment, he’ll skip applying them. He still doesn’t have that much of a scent, because his suppressants reduce its intensity a lot, but it’s still nice to smell a bit of his own scent mingling with everyone else’s (except Annie’s, since she wears prescription-strength blockers due to some sort of insecurity about her scent... Troy has a secret betting pool on the issue and has put all his money on her smelling like hotdogs).

If Annie’s nose twitches a bit when she stands close to Jeff, like she’s trying very hard not to look like she’s scenting him… well—Jeff doesn’t say anything about it.

* * *

Jeff continues nesting with Britta during her heats, and when it’s summer and he’s staring at the blister pack of sugar pills in his suppressant supply that he should probably allow for soon, knowing that Britta’s heat is coming up _too_ , he digs out his phone.

 **JEFF (6:55PM):** Heats together?

 **BRITTA (6:56PM):** Duh doy.

Jeff is used to being miserable during his heats. They’re a drag, leaving him feeling cooped up in his apartment, alternatively getting too hot and too cold. His skin feels weird to the point that sometimes he scratches himself up in his sleep until he bleeds. He ends up bloated and hates looking at himself in the mirror. He leaks slick and has to wear stupid heat boxers instead of his preferred designer brand of underwear. He half-heartedly fucks himself sometimes but often doesn’t bother, because it’s barely a relief at all.

So when he shows up at Britta’s apartment unannounced at 2AM a few days later, he’s very unhappy about being in heat… and also sleepy and uncomfortable, because his heat starting woke him up in the middle of the night. Britta doesn’t complain about him knocking on her door at 2AM. Without blockers and off his suppressants for the last few days, his heat scent is obvious. So when she opens the door, she just blinks at him for a second, then takes his hand and tugs him into her apartment and straight into her bedroom without a word. He takes his clothes off down to his boxers by rote, and she gets back into her spot on the bed, eyes closed, but arms open, and Jeff crawls under the covers, and she takes his face in her hands and directs him, tucking his nose up right against her neck, and the relief he feels—the rightness—is immediate.

He breathes her scent in and out—pine needles and honey—and the insufferable thrum that’s been dancing across his skin—like a million ants crawling all over him—dissipates immediately.

There’s a profound feeling of calm all around him.

Then his scent turns suddenly sharp and sorrowful.

“You okay?” Britta murmurs, rubbing up and down his back, and digging her own nose into his scent gland. “I’ve never been able to scent you this well. You smelled upset just now.”

“M’fine,” Jeff breathes out.

For over 20 years, he’s spent his heats in isolation. Only now, drinking Britta’s scent in while in heat, does he realize how miserable and lonely he had felt going through it all alone—how much it _sucked_ —how much his desperation to be on the strongest suppressant on the market had to do with avoiding how he felt during his heats… and now Britta’s fixing it.

“Britta.”

“Yeah.”

“M’sorry I didn’t nest with you before.”

“S’okay.”

He falls asleep fast, calm and comfortable during a heat for the first time that he can ever remember. Britta’s heat starts less than a day later, and they manage to get all of the blankets and pillows on the bed arranged in a way that suits them both, and it’s pretty damn blissful, honestly.

Jeff does start to get uncomfortable at one point about a day or so into their slumber party, feeling like he’d like to try to get off but not saying anything. His dick is pretty uninterested during his heat—kind of up and down. It’s his ass that’s consistently requesting some attention. Britta’s sleeping with her face buried in her pillow and he knows she doesn’t care much for sex during her own heat, and he didn’t bring his stupid toy anyway, and he is _not_ borrowing one, so he just tosses and turns, trying to sleep.

“Jeff?” Britta says into her pillow eventually.

“Hn.”

“Gimme five more minutes of sleep, and I’ll fuck you with the strap-on I bought for you.”

If Jeff is uncharacteristically touched by Britta buying a strap on just for his heat—enough that he kind of tears up for a second—well... He can just blame his hormones being completely out of wack. He doesn’t even complain that the whole thing is purple when she fishes it out from underneath the bed.

Jeff’s never had anything up there that he wasn’t operating, and the way she slides inside him through his slick, and then smoothly rolls into him over and over, right over his prostate every time, is absolutely unreal, leaving him gasping into his pillow, babbling an admission that she is _much_ better at sex than him, declaring that he’ll even put it in writing.

When he comes, she collapses on top of him, still buried inside where he wants, simulating a knot locked in place. She blankets as much of him with her comparatively tiny body as she can, and the pressure against his skin is _perfect_.

Jeff’s sated and grateful, but as he falls asleep, content, his stomach squirms, thinking about how it would feel to have the real thing inside him.

If his brain jumps to giant blue eyes, perky, full breasts, smooth pale skin, silken brown hair, and the alpha clit all belonging to a certain someone… well—no ones privy to those thoughts who can judge him about it… except himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Over time, because Troy is a terrible liar, and Pierce is not a cautious or carefulor considerate person, and the Dean is very nosy, it slowly comes to light across campus that Jeff Winger is an omega. So the whole semi-deliberate ruse is kind of over at that point, and Jeff’s burned his bridges with his former law firm anyway, so he just kinda stops wearing blockers at all. It isn’t as if he has to deal with aggressive, unwanted attention from alphas much anyway. Shirley’s handbag is always at the ready. And yeah—annoying comments about his height happen, and at first it’s pretty overwhelming and very annoying, to the point that Abed tells Jeff a whole episode of a TV sitcom could have been written about his subsequent tantrum. Eventually though, Jeff’s designation becomes old news at Greendale. The comments stop happening as much, and he’s still the hot guy at school, so it’s fine.

* * *

Jeff is kind of always in a state of heightened anxiety these days, he’s found. Pierce’s stupid overdose and subsequent fake bequeathment of one William Winger brings all kinds of shit up for Jeff that he never wanted to deal with, and once it comes up, it doesn’t go away. Everything in Jeff’s life (his appearance, his career, his education, the group, the group, the group, the group) starts to feel vaguely threatening. He wakes up anxious in the morning, and he goes to bed anxious at night. Panic washes over him in waves. He resigns himself to the ebb and flow most of the time… like he might resign himself to watching cars pass on the highway, or rain fall outside his apartment window—like it’s mundane and unavoidable and just life.

The group—the pack—is somehow both the best and the worst fucking thing that’s ever happened to him all at once, and he doesn’t know how to talk about it, nor does he _want_ to talk about it or think about it, so he mostly doesn’t—just kind of hoping the feelings go away (which feelings, he doesn’t know). He picks up his blockers some mornings and his hands shake thinking about applying or not applying, but he always puts the container back down.

For most of his adult life, Jeff’s satisfied himself with casual relationships and casual sex—keeping a revolving door of people walking through his life, drawn in by his smart mouth and charm and then washed out by his indifference… and he didn’t need to pay a therapist $80 an hour to know that about himself. But fuck—he can feel his 40s creeping up on him—the certainty of being old and not hot and not successful and then all that’ll be left is the group to fall back on. And nowadays, the idea of ever having to let the group go, or any of them leaving, feels like it would smash right through the walls Jeff’s tried to erect around himself most of his life—would knock them right down no matter what he did to try and stop it… and then it’d rip him to absolute pieces... which scares the shit out of Jeff, because if he knows one thing, it’s that people always leave.

So yeah—basically, Jeff’s anxious all of the time—so much so that being miserable enough to feel vaguely sick most days becomes normal, and he’s smashing study room tables with an ax while hopped up on monkey gas or crying over the death of Horsebot 3000 after being forced to spend a day with the Dean at the mall.

The only time Jeff doesn’t feel somewhere from vaguely to completely like shit, is when he’s nesting with Britta.

Nesting with Britta is basically like scent therapy. She puts out all kinds of calm, safe, happy, _infectious_ scents, and those scents are never more potent than when Jeff is in heat with her—like her body is reacting to his and releasing pheromones designed specifically to calm him down…well—because it is—that’s how nesting _works_. It still surprises him every time how fast his anxiety drains right the fuck out of him. It’s the best he ever feels… which is also terrifying, but not in the moment, when all he can feel is calm and safe and blissful as fuck.

So when the psychiatrist Jeff sees suggests that his suppressants might be to blame for some of his struggles with anxiety, and that switching them or going off them might help improve his mental health… well—it doesn’t take much inner debate for Jeff to toss the last couple of suppressant pills in his supply in the trash.

It’s summertime when he makes the decision. Nobody’s doing summer school except him. Troy and Abed are working on a film together that Jeff is sure will never see the light of day. Annie is doing some sort of internship at a hospital for the summer. Shirley is with her kids. Pierce went to his family’s vacation home in the Bahamas.

So the only person who knows at first is Britta, since she’s actually in town, and she helps him through the heat that starts five days later.

He has another heat just two weeks after that, because he’s been on suppressants for over two decades, and his cycle is completely out of wack after going off them, but Britta nests with him again, and the next month after that, and fucks him when he asks, and then things seem to settle and regulate, and Jeff thinks his mood maybe even improves. He’s still anxious at times, but he feels slightly more settled in his skin.

* * *

So everything’s fine… at least until school starts back up.

Jeff gets to the study room first, and he settles into his usual chair and pulls out his phone, and doesn’t look up when he hears someone walk in, lazily waiting for them to initiate greeting.

Instead though, the footsteps halt in the doorway.

Then Jeff gets a whiff of something, and it’s this faint scent in the air that he doesn’t really recognize, but it smells really nice, and Jeff is just curious enough to tear his eyes away from his phone, and turns and looks in the doorway to see Annie staring at him, eyes wide and nostrils flaring.

Then he remembers, of course, that she’s always appeared to kind of like his scent, but she’s never actually smelled the real deal before because of his suppressants… and it is very obvious that when confronted with a full blast of Jeff’s omega scent… she is… _affected_. So much so that her mounting arousal is bleeding right through her dutifully applied prescription-strength blockers. Jeff has a tenth of a second to realize that she smells refreshingly like flowers and fresh rain, and it’s _very_ nice, when her eyes widen considerably (who knew they could get even bigger), and then they turn _red_.

A chill goes up Jeff’s spine suddenly, and despite being over a foot taller than her and outweighing her by at least 60 pounds, all the muscles in his body tense up instinctually up as he prepares to bolt.

Then Annie blinks, and her eyes turn blue again, and she squeaks, blowing her cheeks up with air and plugging her nose, and flees from the room.

Pierce strides in as she’s rushing out, and stares after her with a raised eyebrow. “What’s wrong with her?” He sniffs the air and turns to Jeff. “Did you eat beans again?”

Jeff has no time to process what happened, because the rest of the group is filtering in shortly after Pierce sits down, but thankfully, Annie’s the only alpha in the study group who’s affected _like that_ by Jeff’s scent.

“Ooh! That’s nice,” Shirley says with a big smile as she takes her place at the table. “Jeffrey, you smell like snickerdoodles! Makes me wanna go home and bake some.”

“Thank you, Shirley,” Jeff replies with the same air of indifference with which he usually receives compliments, and that’s the end of that.

Troy says nothing about Jeff’s scent at all, but after talking with Abed for a few minutes about Kickpuncher, he complains about a sudden craving for cinnamon rolls. “Where’s Annie? I want her to make us some when we go back to the apartment.”

“You can’t make your own cinnamon rolls?” Britta narrows her eyes at him. “They come in a can and you just put them in the oven.”

“Annie makes them special,” Abed explains, and Troy nods in agreement, smiling dreamily. “She makes them as mini ones and she knows exactly how much glaze to put on each one.”

“Where is Annie? It’s not like her to be late,” Shirley says with concern.

“Well she was here earlier-“ Pierce starts.

“But she stepped out—didn’t say why,” Jeff says, cutting Pierce off.

He has no desire to explain to the group what transpired with Annie, and have them guess or ask him _why._ Every single one of them is the absolute worst when it comes to anything about him and Annie, so Jeff has no desire to explain anything about what just happened.

“Bathroom emergency?” Troy posits.

“Maybe I should check on her,” Shirley wonders aloud.

“Prim and proper Annie would not want you to check on her if she’s having a bathroom emergency, Shirley,” Britta laughs. “I’ll just text her and see what’s up.”

Annie texts Britta back a few minutes later, claiming to have a bad headache, and says she went home for the day. Of course, that excuse isn’t going to last, since she lives with Abed and Troy. All the same, Jeff is relieved that Annie lied, sparing him from having to deal with Britta or Shirley putting together the puzzle pieces. He figures he can come up with some sort of misdirection by the next day, when Annie will have to admit to going into a sudden rut.

* * *

It turns out that he doesn’t end up having to explain away anything the next day, because he isn’t there.

He’s just gotten back from the gym, so it takes him a while to realize that it’s taking a lot longer for him to cool off and stop sweating than it usually does post-workout. He feels thirsty, and chugs a whole glass of water, scowling at the sweat dripping down his body in droves. He takes a cold shower, and he’s still sweating when he gets out, and that’s when he puts the pieces together.

 _“Fuck,”_ He intones.

It’s so much second nature at this point, that Jeff doesn’t even think about the consequences when he grabs his phone off the bathroom counter and dials Britta.

She answers after about five rings.

_“What’s up?”_

“Britta… I’m going into heat,” Jeff says, still marveling at how fucking hot it feels in his stupid apartment.

_“Damn, Jeff! I thought everything regulated over the summer?”_

Jeff swallows. “So did I, but apparently not. I know it’s been a lot lately, but could you-?”

_“Yeah. Of course. I just gotta get someone to fill in for me at work. This dude owes me a favor for taking his shift, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”_

Jeff looks at himself in his bathroom mirror. “Thanks,” He murmurs, and misses whatever she says next, because he’s looking at his own horrified expression staring back at him, and he doesn’t think he’s ever looked this affected when going into heat, and he thinks, _Britta or not, this is going to be bad._

* * *

He’s kind of a mess by the time Britta gets there, and she can definitely tell, because he opens the door in his underwear, sweating bullets, with a crazed expression. He’s been pacing, and when he lets her into the apartment, he goes right back to it.

She walks in slowly, staring at him. “This is unusual…” She murmurs, setting her bag down on the couch absentmindedly, never taking her eyes off Jeff.

“You think I don’t know that?” Jeff snaps.

“Woah—okay, Jeff… just… tell me how to help.”

“I don’t know…” Jeff says, pacing away from her. “I just—“ He scratches at his arms. All his clothes are off except his boxers, because he couldn’t stand the way any of it felt on his skin, but it’s not enough. His skin still feels fucking awful, and he doesn’t know what he needs to make it stop.

Britta corrals him into his room and makes him sit on his bed, even though he doesn’t want to because even his 1000-thread-count sheets feel coarse on his skin. She builds a nest of blankets and pillows around him, seemingly uncertain if he wants her scent at all, but he thinks he does so he tugs at her until she climbs in it with him, and he tries to just breathe. It isn’t soothing in the same way as usual though. His skin still feels awful, and the nest _needs_ something, and Jeff doesn’t know what, or why, or how to fix it, and it’s slowly driving him _crazy_.

He tugs at the blankets and pillows, trying to arrange them the right way, but it doesn’t work no matter what he does. His frustration builds and builds and becomes more frantic, until Britta is kind of freaking out too because he’s putting out an awful, distressing scent. She starts babbling suggestions about hormonal issues that could be related to him quitting his suppressants so suddenly, suggesting maybe they should call his doctor, but Jeff isn’t really listening, because he’s busy trying to make the nest work, and then suddenly he knows what he needs.

He jumps out of bed and rushes for the gym bag he left in his living room with Britta on his heels, opening it and yanking out the clothes he wore to school feverishly. He snuffles at them, searching for any hint of her scent on his clothes, and when he finds it, he finally relaxes just a bit, the thrumming in his skin turning down some… but the scent is very faint and fading. He slumps onto his couch with his face buried in his designer t-shirt.

Britta sits besides him. “Jeff… what is going on?”

Jeff is too far gone to deny anything now, and he doesn’t care what Britta thinks, or what the group thinks. “I sent Annie into rut today when she walked into the study room, and I think she sent me into heat,” He says miserably, refusing to remove his face from his shirt.

 _“Shit,”_ Britta hisses.

“This shouldn’t have happened…! It was so faint, and I only smelled her for a second!” Jeff says, and he doesn’t know if he’s complaining or trying to defend himself. “I don’t—Britta, I dunno what to do. We can’t—you know? And…”

“Yeah, I know, Jeff…” Britta replies, strangely gentle in a way Jeff didn’t expect, because _fuck_ he’s going into heat because of _Annie_.

A rush of slick comes out of him suddenly, and he groans. “Britta… need you to fuck me, please.”

So she does. She gives it her all, and Britta’s all when it comes to fucking Jeff is generally fan-fucking-tastic… but this time, it just doesn’t work, beyond one meager orgasm Jeff manages while clinging to his stupid shirt, trying to breathe in the almost dissipated scent of Annie’s arousal.

Jeff’s heat has never been like this, and he really _really_ regrets going off his suppressants in that moment.

Annie’s scent completely disappears from all of his clothes within an hour or so, and his discomfort gets worse and worse, like millions of ants are crawling all over him while his stomach cramps horribly and he’s alternatively too hot and too cold and he needs very badly to get off, and he’s just fucking done.

Jeff never cries loudly, but the silent sobs he starts letting out while curled up on his side in bed after a solid five hours of complete and utter misery are possibly even more pathetic… enough to have Britta frantically calling someone on the phone, screaming over the line. Jeff’s too far gone to pay attention to the conversation or who Britta is calling. All he can recognize is the urgency of her words, and for all he knows, she’s calling him an ambulance.

Then Jeff blinks and suddenly there’s two extra people in his apartment, standing over his bed, and one of them is an alpha who is NOT Annie, which has Jeff wanting to puke all over his sheets, until a giant collection of pillows, blankets, and… stuffies?? Suddenly gets dumped all over the bed on top of him, and just like that, Jeff sucks in a giant breath and _settles_.

Every taught muscle in his body relaxes to the point that he feels like he’s sinking into the center of his mattress. His skin feels like it belongs on him again, and every puff of breath makes him feel drunk or high—heady.

Britta shoves something in front of his nose, and Jeff feverishly sucks in breath after breath of it, and _fuck_ —now he’s just getting aware enough to understand:

Britta called Troy and Abed and they brought Jeff every single goddamned thing on Annie’s bed, including her entire collection of pillows and stuffed animals, and it’s all absolutely saturated with her scent—her fucking _rut scent_ —and it’s such a relief that Jeff can’t even bother to feel embarrassed to be seen practically huffing the fabric of her stuffed elephant.

“Is he good now?” Troy asks from somewhere above him.

“Yeah, I think so,” Britta murmurs.

“Well then… we need his sheets and pillows.”

Jeff’s whole body seems to have turned into some kind of ridiculous cooked noodle, so he doesn’t fight when they roll his fitted sheet right out from underneath him, tug away his duvet, and pilfer his $200 memory foam pillows. He’s far too distracted by Annie’s scent to ask what they’re doing and why, nor can he bring himself to care in the moment. It takes another 10 minutes before he even gathers the energy to move enough to drag all of Annie’s things around and on top of him, cocooning himself completely in her scent, and then he goes to sleep.

He wakes up 12 hours later, more calm and rested than he’s felt in _years_.

* * *

Two days later, his heat is pretty much over, though he’s still sleeping in Annie’s bedthings because, as he finds, Abed and Troy took his sheets and some of his clothes and brought them to Annie, which makes Jeff feel simultaneously like more and less of a creep for sleeping so well while wrapped in her comforter.

His phone vibrates against his wooden beside table. He reaches out for it without opening his eyes and answers, assuming it’s Britta calling to check on him.

“Hn” He grunts politely.

_“Jeff?”_

“Fuck,” Jeff opens his eyes, suddenly alert. He sits up, leaning back against his headboard. “Annie?”

There’s silence from the other end of the line for a while, and Jeff gets why—he really does—because he doesn’t know what to say either. But fuck—she called _him_ , so _she_ can figure it out.

 _“Um… I just… wanted to know if—what—what we should—if um…”_ She sighs. _“This is weird, right?”_

“Yeah,” Jeff agrees, and then, because he can’t just leave it like that, “But we’re friends.”

_“Right! So we can—we’ll… the scent thing won’t…”_

“Probably now that it’s happened, it’s done, and it won’t happen again, right?”

_“Right—totally! We can just… it should be okay now, and everything will be fine.”_

“Yep.”

There’s silence again.

“Or—“ Jeff starts.

_“Yes?”_

He glances down, and suddenly becomes painfully aware of the purple comforter pulled up around him and the stuffed bear that may or may not have been under his arm. “If… if it’s a problem, I can uh… get back on suppressants.”

 _“NO!”_ Her voice _growls_ over the other end of the line instantly.

Jeff’s eyes widen considerably, and when he suddenly gushes a bit of slick, his face flames with embarrassment and he almost hangs up on her even though he knows she has no idea what her alpha voice just did to him.

 _“Oh god!”_ Annie squeaks a moment later. _“Sorry! Sorry…! I um… I’m kind of still coming out of my rut. That was… NOT me… WOW—um… sorry…!”_ She clears her throat. _“What I mean is… I-I would hate for you to do that, Jeff. I know that the whole suppressant thing and the blocker thing and everything… it’s… been well—a ‘thing’ for you for a long time, and I wouldn’t want you to go back on them because of some dumb pheromone stuff with me.”_

Jeff hesitates—because that’s maybe not going to work, but he doesn’t want to say why, and… “Um… Look, Annie… That’s very nice and chivalrous of you and everything… And if things… if it’s just a one off, then it’s fine. But… if this pheromone thing _keeps_ being a thing? If my heats _stay_ like that because we’re…? Then I don’t _want_ to be off suppressants.”

There’s silence over the end of the line for a long time—long enough that Jeff almost wonders if their call got dropped.

 _“Because the heat was really bad?”_ She finally clarifies.

Jeff swallows. “Yeah.”

_“But… but before, it was… you got off suppressants because the heats… with Britta and everything… they were…good?”_

“Yeah,” Jeff says again, and his voice kind of falters, because he knows what’s being implied by what he’s said: He _likes_ heats with Britta, where occasionally she fucks him, which Annie probably knows… and he _doesn’t_ like heats caused by Annie. It’s not even really a fair conclusion, because when he has heats with Britta, Britta is _with him_ , and Annie wasn’t, so it was awful… but then just her fucking scent was enough to sate him—was almost _better_ than nesting with Britta, so if Annie had actually _been there with him_ in person? But Jeff isn’t— _can’t_ say that, so he doesn’t say anything about the false conclusion she’s coming to.

 _“Then I’ll get on suppressants, and you won’t have to,”_ Annie says firmly.

Jeff closes his eyes. “Annie…”

 _“Don’t,”_ She replies sharply. _“Don’t give me some crap about how it’s fine for you to take suppressants but not me. I bet you were taking them before you were my age, weren’t you?”_

Jeff doesn’t reply, because yeah—he’s been taking them since he was 16.

_“I know alpha suppressants can have side effects, but so do omega ones, and you’ve been on them anyway for a very long time, and you wanted to stop, so you should stop. And if the pheromone thing stays an issue, I’ll go on suppressants, and you’ll stay off them.”_

“But-“

_“I can make my own decisions, Jeff. I’m an adult, and you need to let me be one.”_

Jeff, for once, doesn’t have an argument to the contrary—not one Annie would accept, anyway.

So that’s that.

* * *

The whole study group is back in class the next week, and when Jeff walks in followed closely by Annie because they met in the parking lot to trade back their sheets, the entire table stares at them.

Shirley gives Jeff a very alarmed and somewhat warning look.

“Jeffrey… why do you smell like Annie claimed you?”

“Because Annie sent Jeff into heat and he sent her into rut and Troy and I had to bring Jeff Annie’s comforter and blankets and pillows and stuffed animals,” Abed supplies helpfully.

“Mm hmm…” Shirley grunts suspiciously. “You sure that’s _all_ you brought to Jeff’s apartment?”

“Shirley, it was just an unfortunate pheromone incident,” Annie says in an annoyed tone as she circles around the table and sits. “Just a fluke of nature. Everything’s fine, now.”

“Trust me—Annie definitely stayed in our apartment. She also smelled like death the whole time,” Troy says, “Oh—and she tried to kill us.”

Annie gasps. “I did not!”

“Which part?” Pierce asks excitedly.

“Neither!” Annie yells.

“We had to use that lock we put on the outside of Annie’s door when Britta asked us to keep her from seeing Blade,” Abed says. “It was like we were in a werewolf movie.”

“She kept banging on the door and screaming about her stuffed animals,” Troy laughs.

“Because you _stole_ them, and didn’t tell me why!” Annie argues. “If you had explained, and sent Abed in to get them instead of invading my territory with your alpha scent during my _rut_ , _Troy_ , everything would have been fine!”

“Then when we brought Jeff’s sheets, she almost killed me again when I opened the door to hand them to her,” Troy continues.

Annie shoots Jeff a very panicked and embarrassed look, and Jeff finds himself saying, “Okay—can we please choose another topic of conversation?”

“Sure,” Abed says. “Jeff was crying and feverish when we got to his apartment, but Annie’s blankets and pillows and stuffed animals immediately calmed him down.”

Jeff sees Annie’s attention turn sharply toward him out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look at her—hyper-focusing on being frustrated with Abed instead. “Abed…” He says in a very forcedly calm voice. “I meant another topic such as math, or history class. Heats and ruts and whatever happens during them is private. I think you know that.”

“But when we’re all Pack, isn’t it different?” Abed queries, tilting his head.

“No, because our pack doesn’t share a sexual bond.”

“That’s true,” Abed admits, “But I didn’t mention sex… I mentioned _scent_ , which isn’t inherently sexual. It can be about being soothed and calmed and feeling like you’re not alone. Arguably, heats and ruts themselves are just a biological means of drawing people together. Sex isn’t always at play. Scent is always at play though. That’s why you and Britta like nesting together during heat. It’s why you stopped taking blockers, and then stopped taking your suppressants. Right, Jeff?”

Jeff very carefully avoids looking at anyone except his (presently very annoying) beta friend. “Abed… I think you’re reading into some things.”

“I don’t think so,” Abed replies, but not in an argumentative tone. “I think you’ve been afraid of letting the group in for a long time, but that slowly letting your cinnamony scent come through represents you slowly becoming a more emotionally open person.”

“Abed,” Jeff says in a warning tone.

“…And your story ends with you becoming the omega who’s scent-dependent on his pack.”

Jeff slams his hand down on the table hard, making most of the group jump, and glares at Abed fiercely. “I am _not_ scent-dependent on the study group,” He says sharply. “And I _never_ will be.”

There’s dead silence in the room. Everyone’s looking at him, and the air around him is quickly being filled with scents of caution and sadness. Jeff’s looking at Abed, who looks neither afraid nor angry (because of course he doesn’t) but he does at least stop talking.

“Wait—“ Troy suddenly says. “Cinnamony scent? It’s your fault I keep craving cinnamon rolls?!”

“Can we please get to studying?” Jeff asks, opening his notebook and searching for their latest homework set.

* * *

 **Scent Dependency:** A phenomenon wherein a person (usually an omega) becomes dependent on the scent of another person or persons in order to maintain their emotional and physical health.

 **Pack Scent Dependency:** When a person becomes scent-dependent on their entire pack; not scent dependent on each individual member, but rather, scent-dependent on the pack as a collective; reliant on their combined pack scent.


	3. Chapter 3

Life goes on.

Pierce locks himself in his panic room because he’s afraid of ghosts.

Jeff meets his dad.

Britta and Troy start dating, but this doesn’t interfere much with Jeff and Britta’s arrangement, since she still isn’t interested in alphas during heat. Jeff feels weird about asking her to get him off during his heat though, so he deals with that on his own or just ignores it, and it’s fine.

His heats are okay. He doesn’t have another awful one like the one caused by Annie. She’s on suppressants, but she stops using blockers. Jeff doesn’t ask why. He knows she used to be self-conscious about her scent. Either that’s gone, or she’s just comfortable with the amount her scent is reduced by her medication.

It’s nice for her scent to be in the mix with the group as a whole. It adds to the whole scent that’s _them_ —The Study Group—and Jeff tries very hard not to take noticeable whiffs of it when everyone is together.

Jeff hosts Christmas for the pack, and Annie pretty much ruins it by inviting their professor, which Jeff pretends not to be as upset by as he actually is, because it’s his last Christmas at Greendale, and it was supposed to just be _them_ (well—and Chang _)_. He—he wanted them all together, and….

Jeff graduates.

The group sends him off happily.

He starts his own law practice, but things don’t really work out that well.

He wishes he could blame people’s prejudices, but he goes back to his suppressants and blockers after graduation, so he knows it’s not that.

He doesn’t see the group much anymore, because everyone’s doing their own thing.

He works out obsessively as a distraction, drinks too much, and slowly watches his life become mundane—predictable—lonely.

Allen comes to him with an offer, which also comes with some very unwanted flirtation, which is gross, but Jeff could use more whiskey, so he goes to Greendale and the group shows up, and he tries to get them to sue the school, then the Pierce hologram changes his mind, and then all the sudden everyone is back together again.

Pierce dies.

Troy leaves.

* * *

Jeff wakes up with his phone ringing, and gropes for it without opening his eyes.

“What?” He grumbles when he answers, having no idea who is calling him or who he just answered so rudely.

 _“Jeff?”_ Annie says on the other end of the line.

“Hn.”

_“You know you’re supposed to be teaching a class right now, right?”_

Jeff opens his eyes and squints at his clock. It’s 11:15AM. He hasn’t slept past 7:00 in months—always waking up early to get in the gym and lift, so he didn’t even bother to set an alarm.

“Uh… Well, tell ‘em class is canceled.”

Annie scoffs disapprovingly. _“Jeff, you can’t just not show up to class. You’re a teacher now.”_

“M’sick.”

 _“Yeah, we’ve all heard that before,”_ Annie snarks back, undoubtably thinking about #Annie’sMove.

It’s true though—Jeff _is_ sick. His head hurts, and he feels nauseous and dizzy and fucking exhausted. He just wants to stay curled up in his bed and sleep.

Annie’s saying something else, but Jeff loses track, and then he’s pretty sure he hangs up on her, and then he’s asleep again.

* * *

“Jeff.”

“Jeff.”

Someone’s poking his arm.

“Jeff.”

“Jeff.”

“Jeffrey Winger.”

Jeff groans, opening his eyes slowly with a sharp intake of breath.

 _Ugh._ Britta is in his apartment.

“I regret giving you my spare key,” He groans into his pillow.

“Well too bad.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because you haven’t been to Greendale in two days and you haven’t answered anyone’s text messages.” She sniffs the air. “Are you off your suppressants again?”

“Haven’t remembered to take ‘em,” Jeff mumbles back, closing his eyes again and nuzzling against his pillow. “Probably couldn’t keep them down anyway. Been sick.”

Britta sits on the bed and sniffs again.

Her close proximity introduces her scent to Jeff’s sad Petri dish of dejection, and he feels just the slightest bit less like shit because of it.

“Well… you don’t _smell_ sick… _or_ like you’re in heat... though you do smell weird.”

“Probably still flushing the suppressants,” Jeff offers as explanation.

“And you have awful B.O. When did you last eat something? Or even get up from this bed to take a shower?”

“I dunno.”

“Well get the fuck up, then.”

Jeff hesitates.

“Jeff?”

He takes the pillow he’s been hugging against his chest and throws it over his head, blocking out the light and the sound of her voice.

She rips his covers away in response.

Jeff flips the fuck out.

“Give me back my fucking blanket!” He yells, reaching out to snatch it back, practically yanking her off her feet as he pulls it back from her hands. “You can’t take my stuff! Leave me alone!”

He recognizes that his outburst was a huge overreaction within a few seconds, but he’s still mad at her—still feels upset and offended and threatened to the point that his eyes are kind of burning. So he doesn’t apologize. He warily tugs his blanket back into the safety of his arms and glares at her as if daring her to tell him he’s being ridiculous.

Britta is looking at him with very wide eyes. “Jeff… are you… _nesting?_ ”

Thrown off balance by the question, Jeff takes stock—thinks about his behavior and how he feels for a moment. “I don’t know,” He says, his voice kind of straining.

“Are you pregnant?”

“No,” Jeff huffs, rolling his eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes—very sure, considering you’re the only one who’s ever fucked me.”

She stares at him for a long time.

“What?” Jeff eventually says, shifting uncomfortably under her gaze, blanket still held tightly against his chest.

“Does the idea of me getting into your nest with you upset you?”

“No,” He replies. In fact, it’s possible that the idea of Britta getting in the nest with him sounds really nice, but Jeff doesn’t add that part.

Britta toes off her shoes and climbs into his bed, sitting up against the headboard slightly. “Come here,” She orders.

“Why?” Jeff complains, even as he complies, shuffling over into the circle of her arms.

“I want to scent you,” She replies softly, hugging him around the middle and burying her nose in his hair.

A slight chill runs up and down Jeff’s spine as she cuddles up to him, and the persistent headache that’s been hitting him every time he wakes up reduces slightly.

“Part of psychology training is learning to diagnose through scent,” She murmurs sagely into his scalp.

Jeff rolls his eyes again.

She sniffs him for a long time, then declares, “You’re sad.”

“Well they should just give you your fucking license to practice right now,” Jeff says, voice biting with sarcasm.“You’re clearly an expert.”

“My scent is helping…” She continues, as if she didn’t even hear him. “But not enough. You’re anxious…” She sniffs him some more. “Grieving… lonely, mad, scared… longing.”

She pulls away slightly, apparently done scenting him, and Jeff has to fight not to complain about it. Then she’s moving, taking her hands from around his middle and shuffling like she’s going to get out of the bed, and something inside Jeff _panics_. He grabs her around the waist, pulling her back, and _whines_ in protest, preventing her from getting up.

He’s immediately embarrassed, because he doesn’t think he’s made a noise like that since he was a fresh 12 year old omega.

“Jeff, I’m just reaching for my phone. Can you loosen up just a little? You’re gonna crush me. You’re kind of a giant, you know.”

“Sorry,” He says in a wobbly voice. He wishes he knew what the fuck was wrong with him.

She grabs her phone and settles back down with him, putting a comforting arm around his back as he gathers her back up in a tight hold, the side of his face pressed against her stomach.

“What’s wrong with me?” Jeff asks, even though he never asks her things like that, because everybody knows she doesn’t know anything.

She doesn’t answer him—just starts rubbing circles in his back. She sends a text that makes Jeff’s own phone vibrate on his bedside table. So either she brittad it, or she’s sent a group message to the pack.

Both of their phones start buzzing with messages, and Britta is responding, so she didn’t britta it, and Jeff doesn’t look at his phone, and Britta still doesn’t answer his question, which maybe doesn’t matter because the reality of the group text puts everything together in his brain and he knows.

He buries his face in Britta’s stomach and tries not to freak the fuck out.

* * *

 **BRITTA (4:12PM):** Need all of you at Jeff’s apartment after school. He’s scent dependent on the pack and he’s having an episode.

 **SHIRLEY (4:13PM):** Awww poor Jeffrey! Losing Pierce and Troy leaving must have been a lot all at once. I can be there in 20 minutes. Should I bring anything?

 **BRITTA (4:14PM):** Maybe some food? I don’t think he’s eaten, and I have no idea what’s in his fridge because he won’t let go of me.

 **ABED (4:16PM):** This is exciting. I’m going to bring all of the blankets and pillows we use to make forts.

 **ABED (4:16PM):** And popcorn.

 **ANNIE (4:16PM):** Awww poor Jeff! Is he okay? Is he mad about it? I know he never wanted this to happen. I’ll be there soon. Leaving right now.

 **SHIRLEY (4:18PM):** Blankets are a good idea! Jordan likes to have lots of blankets when he nests.

 **BRITTA (4:18PM):** He’s way too nauseous to have a full existential crisis. Just don’t try to take any blankets away from him or he will lose his shit.

* * *

Jeff drags himself away from Britta agonizingly slowly. He shuffles to the side of his bed and sets his legs over the edge, then has to stop and close his eyes because the room is spinning terribly and he thinks he might puke.

“Jeff, what are you doing?”

“Gonna take a shower.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Y’said I have B.O.”

“Don’t take a shower. You’ll get upset.”

“‘m already upset.”

“You’ll pass out on the way to the bathroom.”

“Smell wrong.”

“At least wait until another person gets here. I won’t be able to do anything if you faint on me. You’re too fucking heavy. Annie said she’d be here soon.“

“Britta, I want a shower,” Jeff insists.

She groans in frustration, but she comes around the side of the bed and she helps drag him up by his arm, putting all her weight into it. She follows alongside him as he shuffles to the bathroom with her arms out like he’s some kind of baby who’s just started walking.

He doesn’t pass out, but Britta orders him not to stand in the shower, because she is not dragging his unconscious, naked, wet body out of his shower. So he sits in the bottom of his shower with his knees pulled up to his chest and water pelting him, and she was right—the shower makes him upset, because it washes away Britta’s smell and his smell and there’s just water and soap all around him and it’s fucking _awful_ , but he refuses to admit it—doesn’t want to say that he just didn’t want to smell and look like shit in front of the whole group, with greasy hair and sweaty skin, because talking and looking nice is all he has to give them most of the time, which is why they’ll all leave him eventually. His thoughts are swirling in a million different negative directions and he thinks he might puke on himself… which wouldn’t be as bad as normal, considering he’s in the shower and it would get washed down the drain… but he doesn’t puke—maybe because there’s nothing in his stomach.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there pathetically, crying regretfully in his shower. Eventually, someone opens the door and turns the water off, and a towel lands on his head, then a pair of underwear.

He covers himself with the towel, sniffling, and looks up to see Abed standing above him in Batman pajamas, with Jeff’s softest pair of pajamas bundled under his arm. “You should come to the living room. We set up a fort.”

When Jeff makes his way out into the living room with Abed trailing behind him, he finds they’ve changed his sheets, dragged his mattress off his bed and into the middle of the living room in front of the couches, and covered the surrounding space in pillows. Britta and Annie (also in pajamas) are just finishing pinning up one of the sheets vaulting the ceiling, because of course, if Abed was going to be a part of this, he was going to make Jeff’s main room into a miniature Pillowtown/Blanketsburg. Jeff has a passing thought about his walls and whatever horrible thing Abed demanded be done to them to erect the structure, which probably ruined all chances of Jeff getting back his deposit, but he lets it go, because the way that it encloses the space and surrounds it in the smell of Abed and Annie’s apartment is already helping to flush the nausea out of Jeff’s system. Shirley is in the kitchen, making something and humming to herself, her calming scent carrying into the living room.

Walking in and finding they’ve done this for him, and everyone is there who can be, has Jeff swallowing his tongue in equal parts gratitude and shame. He doesn’t want to talk, and he doesn’t want to look at any of them, because if he does either, he’s 90% sure he’s going to cry again. So instead, he stares down at his feet (which is not a bad idea since he’s very unsteady) and sits clumsily down on his mattress. He’s so dizzy that he’s completely disoriented after sitting down, and jumps slightly when Abed throws a blanket over his shoulders.

“Troy let me keep his Spiderman blanket,” Abed offers as explanation.

And yeah—the blanket smells like him. Jeff can’t help rubbing his nose against it, scenting the smell of their friend.

Abed sits down next to Jeff on the mattress, with the remote for his TV in hand, then gathers a bag of popcorn he’d already made from the side table. “Time for Inspector Space Timeeeee…” He mutters under his breath, eyes glued to the TV as he pops a couple of pieces of popcorn in his mouth.

“Abed, you should let Jeff pick something,” Annie objects as she walks over and sits on Jeff’s opposite side.

They don’t touch, but she sits close, and Jeff breathes in deep.

“He can pick after. There’s a new episode on in a few minutes.”

Britta plops down on the front of the mattress.

“Britta, you’re blocking the TV!” Abed objects quickly.

“I made coooookies!” Shirley sing-songs over Abed and Britta’s subsequent bickering, striding into the living room with a plate full and a gummy smile. “Who wants some?”

Everyone reaches out, snatching up cookies one by one—except Jeff.

“Jeffrey,” Shirley says in a very low, warning tone, giving Jeff a look.

Jeff obediently collects a cookie. He doesn’t eat it yet though. He just holds it, and keeps breathing instead, letting the pack’s scents do what they’re supposed to do.

Abed’s scent is muted because he’s a beta, but his preference for buttered noodles is very obvious in the way his smell presents itself, and he makes up for its relative weakness by sitting closer, so that his bony hip is digging into Jeff’s thigh, which is nice, because even though he doesn’t acknowledge it, Jeff is pretty tactile—even more so than omegas are already prone to be. Troy’s smell is strong on the blanket—unusually sweet for an alpha’s scent—kind of like licorice. It makes Jeff feel less sad. Britta’s honey and pine is soothing in his nose. Shirley smells like fresh-baked biscuits, which makes Jeff think of waking up in the morning as a kid to homemade breakfast. Annie’s scent of flowers and rain makes him feel more settled and content—happy.

The array of scents still isn’t quite right, because Pierce’s spearmint smell isn’t present, however vague it always was. Jeff’s nose can also discern that Troy isn’t really there and it’s just a blanket with his smell… but it’s all enough to improve Jeff’s nausea, headache, and mood significantly.

He eats his cookie slowly, feeling Shirley glancing at him occasionally out of the corner of his eye to check on his progress, and when he finally finishes it after about 10 minutes, she immediately shoves another one in front of his face, which he also dutifully eats. Then she makes him drink a glass of water, and pilfers a container of cashews from his pantry and makes him eat those too.

His nausea spikes sharply when she gets up to go to the kitchen, as it also does when Britta has to get up to use the bathroom a few minutes later. But at least Jeff doesn’t do anything embarrassing, like whine again or puke on himself, and both women are back quickly enough.

Jeff’s color and mood start to improve, but he’s also starting to feel sleepy. He glances back behind him, and sees enough space to lay down, so he lays back on his mattress with his head on one of Annie’s abundant throw pillows.

Abed offers him some popcorn. He eyes it for a moment, then takes a handful and puts it on his stomach.

Britta starts using his leg as a pillow.

Jeff chews pieces of popcorn slowly, one at a time, eyes glued on the TV like the rest of them, even though only Abed and Annie know what’s going on, and none of it actually makes sense to anyone else.

The episode finishes, and Abed only glances at Jeff briefly before going to Netflix and queuing something else up that Jeff’s too out of it to recognize, barely seeing the screen through his eyelashes.

Slowly, Jeff’s eyelids start to feel heavy, and he closes them, and when he opens them again, he realizes he’s dozed, as the living room is more dim. Everyone’s still watching TV.

Everything around Jeff looks and feels kind of fuzzy—but not in a bad way—in more the fun way—like he’s pleasantly buzzed. Nobody’s touching him, but he can feel the group’s proximity, and it causes a pleasant sensation to run through him in waves—similar to how he feels when he and Britta cuddle during heat, but also somehow _more_. He feels like he’s living a night out drinking in reverse: Like he’d been horribly hungover, and now he’s working his way backwards into being pleasantly drunk—muscles loose, mind sleepy and relaxed, time a hazy and unimportant concept… a.k.a., the reasons Jeff likes drinking actual booze. But this better than booze.

It’s _way_ better than booze.

It might even be better than sex.

There’s no pressure to please, no desperation to reach some precipice—it’s a completely non-sexual but seemingly infinite feel-good haze.

Jeff’s so relaxed and feels so nice that he doesn’t think there’s a damned thing in the world that could bother him right now.

“Is he asleep?” Shirley whispers from somewhere close behind and above him that might be the couch.

Jeff can remember being really really tired as a kid, curled up in the back seat of a car on a long trip, or kept up too late, and people asking the same thing, and him being awake enough to hear it, but not awake enough to open his mouth and say, “I’m awake”. It’s the same thing now: he can hear them, and knows in some sense that he’s awake, but he’s also not awake at all. So he doesn’t say anything—isn’t sure he could. The group can make their own determination.

A blurry blob of a person, that Jeff can barely make out as Annie through his eyelashes, leans into his field of vision.

“I dunno—his eyes look like they might not be quite shut… he’s either asleep, or really _really_ scent-drunk.” She whispers back.

The mattress dips slightly as someone else leans into his space. “Yeah—he’s high as fuck,” Britta announces. “Or asleep. Fuck—I can’t even tell.”

There’s silence for a while except for the TV.

Someone shuffles a bit closer to Jeff, until their leg is a long line of heat against his arm.

Jeff falls asleep again with fingers combing through his hair and the scent of flowers and rain in his nose.

* * *

He wakes up slowly the next morning with light shining across his face from a gap in the blanket fort. He’s on his side, and he feels incredibly warm and comfortable—cocooned like he’s piled under a ton of blankets. He still feels not quite himself—still kind of drunk on the scent of the pack—but this morning, he can also feel his sadness and anxiousness below the surface—like the moment he woke up, his subconscious caught onto the fact that everyone’s going to have to leave for work or school, and then Jeff will be alone again. He’s just sleepy enough still to try and drag himself back down to sleep and avoid that thought… until someone behind him moves, and two things become apparent very quickly which get him to open his eyes:

First, _someone_ is completely plastered to Jeff’s back, with their arm wrapped around his front and their face smushed right against his cheek and their leg wrapped over both of his, and two, Jeff has his arms wrapped around someone else who is in front of him… and he has no idea who either person is, because everyone in the pack has been so closely packed together all night that Jeff’s nose can’t tell where one person’s scent begins and another’s ends anymore—so saturated is the air with the combined scent of _pack_.

Jeff squints open an eye, and softly says, “Fuck,” because apparently the scent-drunk weirdo he became last night thought it was a good idea to, at some point, drag Abed into his arms and force him to be his little spoon. The beta is sleeping on his side with his legs tucked all the way up to his chest, and Jeff has his arms wrapped around him as if he were some poor, unwilling teddybear.

The person big-spooning Jeff sighs, and Jeff recognizes that sigh and thinks _Fuck fuck fuck_ —because it’s _Annie_ who has apparently seen fit to do to Jeff what Jeff did to Abed. She’s so close, practically cheek to cheek—that Jeff wouldn’t be surprised if she’s inadvertently scent-marked him in her sleep. Jeff is not nearly hopped up enough on the Study Group’s calming pheromones to deal with this, and he quickly starts working to disentangle himself from his two friends.

Abed stays deeply asleep as Jeff wriggles his arms out from around him, but Annie grumbles under her breath, snuffles at his neck, and clings tighter.

Jeff freezes. Her nose and mouth is now resting right over his scent gland… right where an alpha would bite him if they were going to _mate_ him.

Jeff feels like a bucket of ice got dumped all over him at the thought, and he needs _out_. “Annie...” He murmurs, feeling his heart rate pick up rapidly as she doesn’t appear to hear him. “Annie!”

She startles awake at his pleading tone, whole body tensing, then has his exact reaction from before, just with more emphasis. “Fuck!” She pushes away from him instantly, and the moment she does, Jeff is scrambling up.

Shirley and Britta stir at the noise—each having fallen asleep on a couch—but Jeff’s not really paying attention.

He’s pushed himself to lean back against the base of the couch Shirley’s been sleeping on, and he’s breathing too hard and his chest is pumping and blood is rushing in his ears and he wants to run—he wants to be _alone_ , but the idea of leaving the safety of the nest is… he doesn’t think he _can_ —feels like he’s _tethered_ to it—and that’s even worse, because _oh god ohgodohgodohgod_ —

Jeff is scent-dependent on the fucking study group.

“Jeffrey? What’s wrong?” Shirley asks, shifting up and resting a hand on his shoulder.

Jeff hates that it comforts him when she touches his shoulder, and he hates that as everyone wakes up to his rapidly souring _panicked-scared-stressed_ scent, a pheromonal response starts rapidly occurring: Signals about Jeff’s distress are being sent out to the pack like a beacon, causing their own pheromones to respond by immediately pumping out the same _happy safe feel good_ vibes that made Jeff high as a kite the night before. So Jeff breathes in the stifling aroma of the pack’s scent that has his body forcefully relaxing, then he breathes out a panicked sob _because_ the pack calmed him down like that, and it happens over and over. The result is that his anxiety is alternatively spiking and being driven away by the pack’s pheromones, which is just freaking him out more, until he’s hyperventilating, which hasn’t happened in a couple of years, and never in front of _other people_.

There’s a murmuring of voices all around him, but blood is rushing in Jeff’s ears, and people’s hands are on him, and their scents are everywhere, and he needs it to fucking _stop_ , to the point that he actually tries to bolt to his bedroom, but he doesn’t make it past the threshold of the blanket fort before he stops dead in his tracks, because he _can’t_ leave the nest, and it’s the ultimate defeat—the ultimate expression of what he’s become. He crumples, legs giving out on him, and barely catches his fall with his hands.

Annie’s stupid throw pillows are littered everywhere around him, and he tries to push them away to carve out some kind of space where he can just be himself, but _everything_ is saturated with the scents of the pack, and Annie’s especially is all over his fucking clothes because of the way she slept with him the night before, and part of Jeff wants to claw at his neck while another part of him doesn’t want to at all— _likes_ that her scent’s on him.

Jeff is dimly aware of the group arguing—Britta and Shirley and Annie’s voices all pitching high and angry at each other, but all he can do is try to breathe and hope nobody tries to touch him.

Then quite suddenly, his king-sized duvet gets dumped on top of him, enclosing him in darkness.

The blanket reduces the stifling smell of the pack’s scent in his nose just enough, because it just smells like _Jeff_ , and all the noise of the argument is quieter, and it’s all just enough for Jeff to start getting his breathing back under control. He coughs, sucking in deep breaths, realizing for the first time that his cheeks are wet with tears, but it’s only a distant concern. Slowly, he’s able to calm _himself_ down, instead of feeling like the pack’s scents and pheromones did it, which is what Jeff needs right now, and he stops breathing erratically like he just sprinted five miles… though he feels spent enough that it seems like like that’s exactly what just happened.

Someone picks up the corner of the duvet. A body slides into the darkness with him, then their phone lights up, illuminating their face.

It’s Abed.

“Hi, Jeff,” He says. “Does the duvet help? Troy used to do this for me sometimes… Like when I freaked out because of the clocks on daylight saving’s time.”

Jeff doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him.

“You don’t have to talk,” Abed says. “I can also leave if you want. Just blink twice to let me know. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t passed out. You can stay in here as long as you want. Nobody will leave. We’ll all wait for you to feel better… if that’s what you were afraid of.”

He stares at Jeff some more, and Jeff doesn’t blink twice.

“Annie was asleep. She didn’t mean to almost scent mark you. She knows it freaked you out and she feels really bad. You also cuddled me, but that’s my fault, because I was talking bad about myself after you fell asleep. We think you must have heard me saying that I didn’t have a role in the nesting and getting upset about Troy leaving, because that’s when you grabbed me and started using me as your little spoon. I didn’t mind. Actually, it made me feel useful. This does too, because I don’t think Annie or Britta or Shirley would have thought to give you your duvet. I don’t really know anything about being an omega, but I thought maybe all the scents were overwhelming, because I think if I were you, they would be overwhelming to me right now. And I just smell vaguely like buttered noodles, or so I’m told, so my scent is like a constant. Maybe that’s even nice sometimes. Maybe right now, it’s nice.”

* * *

Jeff pokes his head out from underneath the duvet what feels like an hour later. He’s sure his eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, but nobody says anything about it. 

Everyone’s watching him as he sits up, but no one approaches—like there’s some kind of an unspoken understanding that Jeff now needs space, and everyone should give him as much distance as he’s currently able to handle. They all smell… cautious. He doesn’t need to scent that though—he can see it in their eyes as they all stare.

“Jeffrey?” Shirley asks warily. “How you feeling?” 

Annie glances at Jeff with a very concerned and sheepish expression, then looks away.

Jeff avoids both of their gazes.

He drags himself over to the couch that Britta slept on the night before, with his duvet wrapped around himself. His own anxious smell is stifling in his nose, and he knows it must smell particularly distressing to Shirley and Annie as alphas, but they remain seated where they are, shooting him worried glances. He can’t bring himself to say anything to aleviate their concerns.

He feels stuck—like he did junior year, when he was anxious all the time. He isn’t having a panic attack, because the pack’s pheromones are working to prevent that… but it feels like a black hole opened up inside his stomach while he was panicking and trying to calm down under that blanket, and the pack’s scent doesn’t touch it… in fact, the pack is making it _worse_. The hole is opening wider and wider and wider, with every breath of _pack scen_ t, and he just has to sit there and watch it happen—resign himself to being swallowed up, because there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

He’s consumed by a profound sense of hopeless dread.

“Jeff? Do you want to talk about whatever this is?” Britta asks quietly.

Jeff doesn’t look at her either. His throat burns. He sucks in a breath, and his head feels better, and part of him calms, but the hole inside him gapes open further.

His cheeks are wet again.

 _Awesome_.

Annie lets out some kind of whine, and buries her face in her hands, crying. Shirley rubs her back and shushes her.

Jeff’s stomach twists, and her sad smell makes him feel ill, but he still can’t say anything.

The air in the room is stifling. Abed is right though—nobody leaves.

Abed finds _The Grey_ on on Jeff’s Amazon prime account, and starts it.

Everybody stares at the screen, but nobody is really watching.

Jeff sits back against the arm of his couch.

Abed abruptly stands up and goes to Jeff’s room, and comes back with Jeff’s phone, tossing it in his lap.

Jeff picks it up with trembling hands, recognizing the crutch for what it is, but he _needs_ it, and apparently Abed agrees. Jeff glues himself to his phone while _The Grey_ plays in the background.

At some point, Abed shoves a box of crackers into his hands. Jeff doesn’t eat any. He dozes fitfully. He stares at the TV; looks at his phone some more.

It’s only that night, when Jeff’s still not talking, and they’ve burned through four more Liam Neeson movies, that Shirley clears her throat and says softly, “We should talk about what we need to do as a pack… for Jeffrey.”

They talk in low tones about the rest of Jeff’s classes for the week that he’s probably not going to be up to teaching—especially since he hasn’t taken his suppressants in three days and his heat is probably going to start soon.

There’s discussion of making a _schedule_ to make sure Jeff gets enough interaction with the pack and doesn’t feel _rejected_ , since he’s _vulnerable_ because he’s been ———— on the pack for who knows how long without realizing it and he _just lost_ Troy and Pierce.

They talk about how Jeff’s heat could start any day now, and Shirley and Annie can’t be around when he goes into heat, but he might still need their scents for the nest.

There’s talk about applying for emergency pack leave with work and school because Jeff is————

All of these discussions happen without Jeff saying a word. Instead, he navigates to the web app on his phone and types in “Omega Health Specialist”, and finds the earliest available appointment: the next morning at 11AM.

He falls asleep with the scent of the pack in his nose lulling him, and wakes up with his phone vibrating in his hand, quietly alerting him and nobody else that it’s 6AM.

He takes stock of himself, and thankfully, he feels this morning like he can leave the threshold of the blanket fort. The idea of doing so makes him want to puke, but he thinks it’ll be _possible_ for him to do it.

Everyone’s still asleep, which is how Jeff planned it.

He gets up as quietly as he can, throws on his coat and the running shoes that were by the door, grabs his keys and wallet off his kitchen counter, and then leaves his apartment to go to his car.

He feels sick as fuck on the drive to the clinic, and when he gets there and parks, he has to open his car door and puke the small amount of food in his stomach onto the pavement. Afterwards, he settles back in his seat with the neck of his shirt around his nose, closing his eyes and breathing in the pack’s scent on his pajamas as he waits for his appointment time.

His phone starts buzzing at about 7:30 with a call from Britta. Then it’s Shirley calling him, then Abed, then Annie.

He ignores them.

They all start sending him texts.

**BRITTA (7:34AM):** Jeff???? Where the fuck are you????

 **BRITTA (7:37AM):** Jeff seriously. Everyone is freaking out. Where did you go?

 **BRITTA (7:40AM):** You’re going to make yourself so fucking sick I don’t even want to think about it. Please tell us where you are.

**SHIRLEY (7:40AM):** Jeffrey, please let us know that you’re okay.

**ANNIE (7:45AM):** Jeff, I’m really sorry. I hope you didn’t leave because of me. If you did, *please* just let me know, and I’ll leave so you can come back to your apartment. Please don’t make yourself sick because of me. You’re really scaring me.

 **ANNIE (7:46AM):** Please, Jeff.

**ABED (8:02AM):** Jeff. As you know, I have tracking devices on everyone in the study group. I assume you really want to be alone right now or you wouldn’t have left. Shirley or Annie or somebody is eventually going to remember that I can track you down. If you will send a simple text message telling everyone that you’re okay and when you will return, I’m pretty sure we can avoid the group coming to find you in the next 20 minutes or doing something really crazy like calling the cops.

Jeff looks at all the messages for a while. Then he navigates to their group chat.

**JEFF (8:09AM):** I’m fine. Should be back by noon.

He goes to his chat with Annie. He stares at her text for a long time. He hates that she thinks it’s her fault. It’s really not. It’s all him—all bullshit with him. He doesn’t know how to say it. Doesn’t know what to say and what not to.

**JEFF (8:31AM):** This isn’t because of you. I’m not upset with you. Sorry for scaring you.

He gets progressively more nauseous as he waits for his appointment, and an ever growing part of him is yearning for the pack, until he’s sucking in huge breaths of his t-shirt to calm himself back down. But he makes it to his appointment time, fills out all the stupid, repetitive forms in the waiting room, and makes it into one of the clinic’s sterile examination rooms. He sits on the stupid padded bed thing that they have in every room in every clinic ever, with the ridiculous wax paper covering only a portion of the stupid seat which always makes him wonder why they even bother, and waits for the doctor he made an appointment with to show up. He eyes the trashcan in the corner and considers taking it to possibly throw up in.

The door opens abruptly. An average sized man with short cropped hair and a big smile pops through.

What. The. Fuck.

“Oh hey! If it isn’t Jeff Winger!”

It’s fucking _Rich_.

Stupid omega Rich from pottery class with his stupid perfect pottery and his stupid kettle corn.

This is officially the worst week of Jeff Winger’s entire life.


	4. Chapter 4

“I thought your last name was Stephenson,” Jeff says, instead of saying something polite, such as “Hello.”

He doesn’t recall signing up for an appointment with Dr. Rich Stephenson… he’s pretty sure he would have noticed that, even in his current state.

“It was Stephenson!” Rich replies with his usual overzealous enthusiasm and 1000-watt smile. “I just got mated last year and took my alpha’s last name.”

“Of course you did,” Jeff replies dryly. He eyes the trashcan in the corner again, but he swallows it down. “Um… Is there anyone else I can talk to here? No offense Rich, but I’d rather have a doctor I don’t know.” _And don’t hate on a truly spectacular level,_ Jeff adds privately to himself.

“Well, there’s nobody else in this practice who specializes in omega health… but I could refer you to a doctor at another practice if you’re uncomfortable?” Rich replies, ever accommodating—brushing over all of Jeff’s thinly veiled resentment.

Jeff can’t wait though. He needs to get this done as soon as possible. He takes a deep breath in and out. “Nevermind. Let’s just have the appointment.”

“Okay then!” Rich says, beaming another winning smile. He drags out that black leather swivel stool that every doctor in the world has and sits down on it with his clipboard in hand. “What brings you in today, Jeff?”

“I have a prescription for suppressants, but I’ve been off them for a few days because I had an… episode. I want to know if I can get back on them or get on another medication that might help my… situation.”

“What kind of episode? What situation?” Rich asks, putting on his serious doctor face and showing Jeff a nearly _offensive_ level of attentiveness. “You know Jeff, I can tell that you’re not feeling well. What’s got you so out of sorts?”

Jeff feels a lump forming in his throat, because he hasn’t said it out loud, but now he has to, and it fucking sucks, but he is not going to do something embarrassing, like cry in front of stupid Rich with his stupid face and stupid hair. “I got really sick a few days ago, and to make a long story short, I found out that I’ve become… _scent-dependent_ … on my study group from Greendale and was having a bad reaction because…” Jeff pauses, closing his eyes and taking a breath through another wave on nausea. “…Pierce died recently and Troy moved away. So that’s probably what triggered it.”

“When was this?” Rich asks, frowning for the first time Jeff’s ever seen. “When did you have this episode?”

“I don’t know. I started feeling bad like four or five days ago, and figured out what was happening about two days ago.”

Rich stares at Jeff for a moment, speechless. “Jeff, you should be nesting with your pack right now,” He sounds confused—urgent. Jeff looks down at his shoes, takes another breath in and out. His eyes burn.

“Are… are they in the waiting area?” Rich continues, seemingly unable to conceive of how Jeff is here _alone_. “You know they’re allowed to come into the appointment with you as long as you’re comfortable with that. If someone from reception tried to stop them, I will have that person fired immediately.”

Maybe it's how _nice guy Rich_ is irate enough to _fire someone_ if they separated Jeff from his pack; maybe it's how his reaction illustrates exactly how _dangerous_ and _stupid_ and _crazy_ what Jeff's done is; maybe it's just the reminder that the pack isn't _here_... whatever it is, it makes Jeff crack.

“They’re not in the waiting room,” He chokes out, and fuck fuck _fuck_ he _hates_ himself. He covers his face with his hands. It’s childish, because Rich is going to know that he’s crying, but he does it anyway, as his eyes blur with tears and then overflow.

Why the fuck did it have to be in front of _Rich?_

“Oh dear…” Rich says softly.

Jeff hears shuffling, then Rich approaching, then a box of tissues is placed in his lap.

Jeff doesn’t want to reach down to grab them, so he just leaves them there, and continues crying silently into his hands.

“Is your pack aware that you’ve become scent-dependent on them, Jeff?” Rich almost whispers, his tone still clearly displaying his confusion—like Jeff is some puzzle he’s utterly confounded by.

Jeff nods his head, then he lets out a sob, thinking about the pack and feeling sick and anxious and _terrible_ for having run off on them. He _scared_ them. He made Annie think that she’d _hurt_ him.

There’s silence for a long time, then Rich says in a very low voice, “Jeff… my impression of your study group was always that they were all very nice people—like a family. I’d be sorry to know that impression is wrong... but if you’re in an unsafe situation with your pack… there are people I can call who can help you.”

“No…” Jeff starts shaking his head immediately, “They’re not… My pack’s not like that…” He laughs suddenly, hysterically, through his tears, thinking about them. Thinking about how much he loves them. How much he doesn’t deserve them. How ridiculous the idea of them mistreating him is. “They… they’ve been taking care of me for two days without complaining about having to miss work or school. They… they made me this blanket fort to surround the nest and… and Shirley made cookies, and Abed put on _The Grey_ for me even though he _hates_ the movie, because he knows I like it… and Britta called them all and she didn’t get mad when I snapped at her… and-and Annie just wanted to comfort me… and they made me feel so fucking _loved_ and just… they’re just… the fucking… _best_.”

There's a long silence, then Rich asks very pointedly but gently, “Then why aren’t you with them?” 

“I-“ Jeff starts. His throat closes up completely. He takes several sobbing breaths, but he still can’t speak—doesn’t know how to say it— _can't_.

Rich abruptly steps away from Jeff and opens the door of the room, calling out to a nurse in the hall and talking to her in low tones. The conversation lasts just a few seconds, and then he’s closing the door and coming back to stand next to Jeff.

“Jeff, we’re going to keep talking when you’re ready, but you’re looking very pale and it's worrying me. I imagine you can’t keep anything down, so Carly is going to come in here in a minute and we’re going to set you up with some IV fluids, okay?”

Jeff just nods, sniffling. After a few minutes, the nurse comes in, and they set him up with an IV drip, and he sits, rubbing a fucking embarrassing amount of tears from his face, and refusing to look Rich in the eye.

Rich returns to his swivel chair, but he scoots it over close to Jeff, forgoing his clipboard entirely.

“So you said you’ve recently lost some pack members…” Rich starts carefully. “…But your pack is great, and they’ve been helping you nest through it with all the thoughtfulness and love in the world. Still… at some point today, you left the very nice nest you said they made for you… and came here, to this appointment. Jeff, I have to be honest… I’m quite shocked that you managed to even make it out of the threshold of your nest—much less get here and wait in my waiting room for who knows how long all alone, feeling sick, with your instincts no doubt screaming at you to go back to your pack. So I’m assuming that for you to come here today… you must have been in very great distress. Since you say it wasn’t about your pack… I’m going to guess that you reacted very badly to becoming a scent-dependent omega, and were hoping there was some way you could make it go away. Am I wrong?”

There’s still a lump in Jeff’s throat, so he just shakes his head no, snuffling.

Rich sighs, his chair squeaking slightly as he does so. “Okay… First of all… I want you to know that while leaving in the middle of a pack nest is unusual… it’s not an unheard of reaction. You are not alone. There are other people out there who react just as you have to learning that they have become scent-dependent. They have great packs, they love their packs, but the idea of being scent-dependent on their pack—in fact, often scent-bonding and mating as well… absolutely terrifies them. So you don’t have to feel ashamed or scared. You aren’t a total anomaly… okay?”

Jeff nods, and yeah—that actually does kind of help—to know there’s at least a precedent for what he’s done—that he has some hope of explaining it to the pack—that they have some hope of making sense of it.

“As you can probably guess, Jeff…” Rich continues, “There’s a common theme that connects scent-dependent people who run out in the middle of a pack nest and make themselves terribly sick. That common theme... is trauma.”

Jeff sucks in a shaky breath, and sucks it out, looking at the floor and not looking at Rich.

“…Past sexual abuse—especially in childhood—is the most common cause. However, an early abandonment, or a past rejection such as a dissolved mating, or a host of other traumas, or several all at once, can also trigger this desperate need to run. You don’t have to tell me what the trauma was for you. However, I would highly recommend that you find a therapist who you feel comfortable talking about these issues with. I can give you the names of several—even some who specialize in scent-dependency issues.” Rich sighs deeply. “As far as what you asked about before… realistically, medications aren’t an option for you. In fact, I could not, in good conscience, recommend for you to go through any sort of hormonal medication regimen or trial intended to break your scent-dependency. Scent-dependency happens for a reason. It’s a biological response meant to bring your pack together, as well as fill gaps in your own emotional and physical needs. Studies show that scent-dependent people and the packs to which they belong are the happiest in the world. It isn’t an ailment, or a handicap, nor does it make you weak—though I know it can be inconvenient sometimes. Leaders of packs are often actually the first ones to become scent-dependent in a pack, as it strengthens their bond with the pack and creates trust and intimacy with all the members. Because of all that, and because, as you say, your pack is ‘the best’…You wouldn’t be able to find a doctor in the state willing to write you a prescription for drugs intended to help dissolve your scent-dependency. Attempting to dissolve scent-dependency is incredibly dangerous and seen as a last resort, for people who simply cannot be scent-dependent, because the danger caused by the dependency is greater than the danger of trying to get rid of the dependency. For example… if all members of the person’s pack died suddenly, or became horribly abusive.”

Jeff’s nausea spikes sharply. He hopes Rich stops there, but he keeps going.

“…In the latter case for example… the process would involve Omega Services, who would investigate the abuse with the police. They would set the omega up with supervised visits with their pack, or if that wasn’t possible, would try to manage their symptoms by providing them with samples of their pack’s scent, all coupled with a medication with a host of side-effects. If that failed—which, unfortunately, there is a high likelihood it would… they would have to put the omega into a medically induced coma to prevent their dea-”

“Stop, please,” Jeff finds himself saying. His voice is toneless—void of emotion.

“Right. Sorry,” Rich apologizes. “You don’t need to know all those details. I’m just saying that it isn’t really an option with current medical science. And even if it were… I absolutely think that your best course of treatment is therapy to help you understand and cope with your fear of dependency. As for your suppressants…” Rich shoves his chair backward, rolling toward the table where he left his clipboard. He looks over Jeff’s list of medications, scrawled out on the forms he filled out when he came in. “There’s no problem with you continuing to take these… though they won’t reduce your scent-dependency in any way. However, for some omegas, emerging scent-dependency can cause side-effects with the pills that didn’t occur before. For example… have you had any issues with depression lately?”

Jeff thinks about the inordinate amount of booze he’s been drinking, and the way he felt away from the pack, trying to make it in the real world… and even after coming back. “Probably,” He replies hoarsely.

“Okay then… I’ll write you a prescription for something different, and if it doesn’t work for you, you can contact the office and I’ll call in something else for you to try.” Rich rolls to the side table and digs out a prescription pad. He starts writing on it quickly, then flips it over and writes on the back. He hands it to Jeff. “I’ve written the names of a few therapists on the back of that who I highly recommend. So even if you don’t fill the prescription, don’t throw the paper away, okay? Please _please_ see someone, Jeff.”

Jeff sniffs. “Yeah,” He croaks.

“Good,” Rich says, taking a big breath. “Now… I’d _really_ like to get you back to your pack as soon as possible. Is there anything you’d like to talk about first?”

Jeff swallows—licks his lips. “Is…” The paper in his hands starts to tremble. “Pierce and Troy… what if… more of them… what happens if… Sh-Shirley or Britta or Abed or Annie leaves too? Would I… would I survive it? …F-functionally?”

Rich looks at Jeff with a very sober, saddened expression. “A tendency toward scent-dependency… does it runs in your family?” He asks carefully.

Jeff doesn't answer, nor does he nod or shake his head, but his lack of answer must be answer enough for Rich.

“I won’t pretend that that stuff doesn’t happen. But yes—it can be managed. Especially with therapy,” Rich says, nodding at the paper in Jeff’s hand again. “I talked about seeing a therapist... But one thing I think you should also do, when you’re ready, is talk to your pack about your fears. I presume Troy left before anyone knew you had become scent-dependent. Is that right?”

"Yes," Jeff replies shakily.

“And Pierce passed away which… I’m sorry for your loss.”

Jeff feels himself getting choked up again, which is ridiculous, because most of the time, the old man drove him crazy, and they fought all of the time. But it’s somehow nice to hear, even from Rich—for Pierce’s loss to be acknowledged.

“My point is… those two members of your pack left, but not because of or in spite of how it would affect you, right? And your pack knowing that you _need_ them now… that will change the dynamics of the pack going forward. If your pack loves you as much as I imagine they do, they are _going_ to take your needs into account when they make plans, and they're _going_ to try their best to make any unavoidable separations as easy for you as possible. You just have to communicate your needs with them, and they need to communicate with you too. Okay?" He says it very firmly—with absolute confidence.

And it makes sense—it does—what Rich is saying. After all, Jeff is the biggest asshole in his pack by far, and he can't imagine _himself_ ignoring the needs of Annie or Abed or Shirley or Britta if any one of them was scent-dependent... which means they wouldn't possibly ignore _him_. 

"Hurt over Pierce will always be there," Rich continues softly. "But the hurt will go from a sharp sting to an ache with time, and with the help of your pack. Troy may come back… and even if an opportunity too good to pass up, or some terrible accident… takes some of your other pack members away… packs grow and evolve. New members join. They become a part of the pack, and they help you when other members are gone—either temporarily or permanently.” Rich smiles for the first time in a while, and it’s the first smile to ever grace his lips that didn’t make Jeff want to rip his face off. “You know... I think scent dependency is kind of a beautiful reflection of what it means to be in community with others... Don't you? There’s always fear… there’s always the possibility of loss; separations happen. That's just unavoidable sometimes. You lose people, and it _hurts_. But you can’t spend your life refusing to get close to people because you're terrified of being left. All that does is _guarantee_ being alone. People aren't meant to live in isolation. Over and over again, studies have shown that being alone is detrimental to the mental and emotional health of living beings. For someone who is scent-dependent like you, Jeff, it's just that the affects on your health are much more obvious to yourself and others, because when you don't allow yourself the relationships that you need, you become physically and emotionally ill rather quickly. Maybe that sounds like an entirely negative thing... but at the same time, there's a great reward to scent-dependency, just as there is a great reward for anyone who opens themselves up to being in community. There are so many good things—good people—out there to love and be loved by. Isn't that reward worth the risk of loss? Few people get to experience the kind of bliss that comes with pack nesting. I myself never have, though I’ve heard that it can be truly euphoric. So really, Jeff, my challenge to you, is to _embrace_ that.”

Rich’s smile gets too large, and Jeff starts to become annoyed with his face again, and also the use of the word, “euphoric”.

“Embrace it…” Rich repeats, beaming at him—smile too large—blinding. He claps his own thigh enthusiastically and stands, collecting his clipboard and moving for the door. “Now! Why don’t you call up your pack to come pick you up, huh buddy? That way we can keep that IV in you until they get here. I might even have some kettle corn for you to enjoy while you wait!”

Jeff’s phone doesn’t even ring once before Britta picks up.

* * *

He waits in the examination room, though Rich leaves, off to take care of other patients.

He thinks about the group, and how much he already misses them, after just 6 hours apart.

He thinks about how mad they’re going to be at him—how much he probably scared and hurt them.

He thinks about their comforting scents, and their voices, and their smiles, and their hugs.

He thinks about how much he loves each and every one them.

The door to the room slams open, and the pack suddenly floods into the examination room, bursting with panicked and relieved sentences that are indecipherable in their combined litany. Their scents instantly fill the sterile room, making even this terrible place where Rich is his fucking doctor feel suddenly like home. And yeah—it’s still terrifying how they do that—but Jeff still finds his lips curling into a soft smile as he stands, unsteady on his feet as he is, and opens his arms.

The din stops for half a moment, then Shirley and Annie chorus an “Awww” and everyone gathers in.

Jeff drinks in all of their scents—the comfort and love and relief and anger in them—and for now, he feels happy and whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was going to be longer and get into post-series content, but when I got to the group hug, I felt like it had to end there. That means there's some loose ends I have not tied up and some additional content still swirling around in my brain, which is vaguely mapping itself into a sequel and/or some time stamps. I'm not sure yet. It depends on if my brain cooperates or not.
> 
> I apologize for any and all glaring typos in this. I keep going back and finding more of them and trying to edit them out, but there are doubtless more I have missed. Writing ABO is something I have never done before, and I think it was just out of my comfort zone enough for me to have a "fuck it" attitude and post it kind of like ripping off a band-aid... thus less careful initial editing. So I hope the 8 people who will read this could make sense of it and had a good time. XD


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